Robert Sawyer - Quantum Night

“‘Yes, an embryo, from the moment of conception, is genetically fully Homo sapiens, but it has no complex cognition, no ability to plan or anticipate, and little if any joy. As it develops, these faculties will accrue gradually, but they clearly do not exist in anything approaching their full form until several years after birth. On the bases previously discussed, a utilitarian should support abortion when a prenatal diagnosis has been made that is strongly indicative of an unhappy, painful life; it is on this current basis—the lack of a fully developed mind for years to come—that a utilitarian can additionally embrace not just abortion but also a merciful release when a severe defect is not apparent until after parturition.’”

“‘Parturition,’” said Dickerson. “A right fancy word, that.” She glanced at the jury. “For those of us more accustomed to plainer speaking, what is ‘parturition’?”

“Childbirth.”

“In other words, Mr. Marchuk, sir, you believe abortion is okay. You believe—and I find this almost impossible to say aloud, but it is what the indicated passage said, isn’t it? You even believe infanticide can be okay. But you don’t believe in capital punishment.”

“Well, as Peter Singer would argue…”

“Please, sir, it’s a yes-or-no question. Are you against capital punishment in all circumstances?”

“Yes.”

“Are you in favor of abortion?”

“I’m in favor of increasing utility, in maximizing happiness, so—”

“Please, sir, again: yes or no? In the vast majority of circumstances in which a woman might desire an abortion, are you in favor of letting her have it?”

“Yes.”

“And are there even times when infanticide, when killing an already-born child, is, in your view, the right thing to do?”

“On the basis that—”

“Yes or no?”

“Well, yes.”

“And your goal here is to convince the good men and women of this jury that it would be morally wrong to execute the defendant?”

I spread my arms. “I have no goal other than to explain the screening technique I developed, but—”

“No, buts, sir. And no more questions. Your Honor, I’m very grateful to be through with this witness.”

I said it didn’t bother me if people examined my résumé, and that’s true—with one exception. When other academics look at it, they shake their heads when they see I did my undergrad at the same institution I teach at now; that’s always considered fishy. Although I love the University of Toronto’s “Prof or Hobo?” web quiz, which asks you to identify by their photos whether a person is a vagrant or a faculty member, we tenure-track types are supposed to be more like male chimpanzees: once we reach maturity, and have proven ourselves intractably irascible, we’re expected to leave our native community, never to return. Welcome Back, Kotter was a bad-enough scenario for a high-school teacher; it was anathema to those of us in academe.

But my own career had brought me from doing my bachelor’s degree here at the University of Manitoba—my flight had gotten in last night—back to being a tenured professor at the same institution. When asked why, I cite several reasons. “A fondness for bitter cold,” I’d quip, or “An abiding love of mosquitoes.” But the real reason was Menno Warkentin.

When I started at U of M, in 1999, Menno was teaching the same first-year introductory-psych course that I myself taught now. Back then, I was eighteen, and Menno was fifty-five. He was now seventy-four and had emeritus status, which meant he was retired but, unlike some of the figurative if not literal bums who were eventually shown the door, was always welcome in his department, and, although drawing only a pension and not a salary, could still do research, supervise grad students, and so on. And, for all those years, he’d been my friend and mentor—I’d lost track of the hours we’d spent in his office or mine, shooting the breeze, talking about our work and our lives.

More than just his age and professorial status had changed since I’d started being his student; he’d also lost his sight. Although he happened to be diabetic, and blindness was a common side effect of that condition, that wasn’t the reason. Rather, he’d been in a car accident in 2001, and while the airbag had kept him from being killed, its impact had shattered his beloved antique glasses, and shards had been thrust into his eyeballs. I’d once or twice seen him without the dark glasses he now wore. His artificial blue eyes were lifelike but didn’t track. They just stared blankly forward from beneath silver eyebrows.

I found Menno sitting in his office with his headset on, listening to his screen reader. His guide dog, a German shepherd named Pax, was curled contentedly at his feet. Menno’s office had an L-shaped dark-brown shelving-and-counter unit against the back and side walls, but he had everything out of the way, up high or pushed to the back, so he couldn’t accidentally knock things over. And whereas I always had stacks of printouts and file folders on my own office floor, he had nothing that he might trip on. His office had a large window that looked not outside but into the corridor, and the white vertical blinds were closed, I guess on the principle that if he couldn’t see out, no one should be able to see in.

Today, though, in the summer heat, his door was open, and as I entered, Pax stood and poked her muzzle into Menno’s thigh to alert him that someone had arrived. He took off the headset and swung around, my face reflecting back at me from his obsidian-dark lenses. “Hello?”

“Menno, it’s Jim.”

“Padawan!”—his nickname for me since my student days. “How was your trip?”

I took a chair, and Pax settled in again at Menno’s feet. “The D.A. really worked at discrediting me.”

“Well, that’s his job,” Menno said.

“Her job. But yeah.”

“Ah.”

“And she brought up some stuff about my past.”

Menno was sitting on a reddish-brown executive-style chair. He leaned back, his belly like a beach ball. “Oh?”

“Stuff that I myself didn’t recall.”

“Like what?”

“Do you remember 2001?”

“Sure. Saw it in a theater when it first came out.”

“Not the movie,” I said. “The year.”

“Oh.” He made a how-could-I-forget-it gesture at his face. “Yes.”

“Jean Chrétien was prime minister then, right? And George W. Bush was sworn in as president.”

“Umm, yeah. That’s right.”

“And what were the biggest news stories of 2001?”

“Well, 9/11, obviously. Beyond that, off the top of my head, I don’t remember.”

“But you would,” I said.

“What?”

“You would remember others if you gave it some thought, right?”

“I guess.”

“I don’t,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“The D.A. surprised me with an article about my grandfather from the Winnipeg Free Press. I went to the DaFoe Library this morning, and they pulled the microfilm of that edition. I started looking at other headlines from that day, but none of them stirred any memories, and neither did the front pages of the Free Press from other days around then. So I went online and looked at the covers of Time and Maclean’s from 2001. I didn’t recognize any of the stories until the summer. Two thousand, no problem. The second half of 2001, yeah, it all came back to me. But the initial six months of 2001 are a blank. The first thing I can pin down from that year is the day after Canada Day. July first fell on a Sunday that year, so people got July second off work. I remembered being pissed that I’d tried to go to the post office on that Monday to pick up a parcel, only to find it closed for the holiday.” I spread my arms. “I’ve lost half a year of my life.”